[Distutils] MANIFEST destiny :)

[Patrick K. O'Brien]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:

<major snippage>

> And your point of view is missing the part where everybody else isn't a 
> distutils expert like you or I, and unlike you or I, has *no interest 
> whatsoever in becoming one*.  Simple things should be simple, and 
> distributing most packages shouldn't be rocket science.  In particular, 
> there should be a gentle learning curve from "distribute one module" to 
> "complex distribution with autogenerated bits not in source control".  And, 
> the path for *how* you do those things should be laid out.

+1 to everything you said in this post, the above snippet being a pretty
good synopsis.  And thank you, Phillip, for championing this effort to
make Python package distribution simpler and easier for those of us who
really don't care how it all works, just that it do so painlessly.

> Ironically, although the Perl community's language philosophy is "more than 
> one way to do it", their build and distribution philosophy seems to be that 
> there's not merely one obvious way to do it, there's *exactly* one way to 
> do it.  And *that* is the real reason why Perl has always been ahead of 
> Python in readily-available libraries.  The Perl distribution culture 
> reflects the idea that build tools are for sharing software with the 
> community, not a framework for creating private build systems.

Sadly, I think there is a lot of truth in this observation.

-- 
Patrick K. O'Brien
Orbtech       http://www.orbtech.com
Schevo        http://www.schevo.org